[slideshow]It all started so innocently.
On a trip to the Costa Brava region of Spain Brunette suggested an outing to the seaside resort town of L’Estartit. Our arrival in L’Estartit led to Outing #2; a glass bottomed boat ride to the Medes Islands. For purposes of this post the only thing you care about in terms of the Medes Islands is that they are a scuba divers’ paradise.
The skies were gloomy until the last 10 minutes but all in all it was a pleasant enough, if unremarkable, boat trip.
Upon disembarking Blonde noticed several men in hazmat suits at the end of the walkway. Brunette initially claimed there were no men in hazmat suits until she saw several. To add to the intrigue, some of the hazmat men had bandanas covering their faces. Was this an environmental disaster? A hostage situation? Just some germa-phobes out for the day? A public execution? Blonde decided to walk up to the most masked of the men and ask. Logical thing to do with a large masked stranger.
Luckily, for a masked would-be executioner he had nice blue eyes and spoke excellent English. This may be common among would-be executioners but it was Blonde’s first encounter with one (that she could recall). Masked Man explained that this was a professional search and rescue team from a country that is a member of the European Union. (This is the only attempt at discretion ever made on this blog. Giving more precise identifying information could potentially lead to angry wives on Facebook and there’s nothing good that ever comes from that. All of those restraining orders against Blonde are testimony to the aforementioned fact.)
The hazmat men were conducting a hazing/indoctrination ceremony with the newer members of the search and rescue team. This was not an event sanctioned by any organization other than, apparently, a brewery. The men were there for a week using their vacation time. Like any well-designed male hazing ritual this included booze, attempted sexual humiliation and varying degrees of nudity.
Talk about a lucky day for B&B!
Blonde, Brunette and a few other amazed passersby and tourists watched as the process began. The initiates knelt down in the sand with their backs to the sea and their wetsuits peeled to their waists or, in the case of one rather wispy lad, their Euro-skivvies. Clearly the whole ritual tested key skills needed for the search and rescue profession; drinking a bottle of beer through one’s snorkel, licking whip cream off the nipples and other publicly available hairy body parts of fellow team members, having fresh eggs smashed into one’s hair with a heavy dose of flour poured on top, two men starting at opposite ends and eating to the center of the same piece of salami and squirting bottles of mustard and ketchup down the back of the boss’s Euro-skivvies. (As most bosses would probably do at some point, he had stripped to said skivvies and joined in with the initiates.)
This impressive display of skill and heavy-handed sexual innuendo ended with the initiates running after the hazmat men and throwing them into the sea. How did you think it might end? With certificates of satisfactory completion?
B&B had been gobsmacked with delight throughout the ceremony. Unfortunately, the boss said something that included the words “public and tourists” to all of the men filling the Mediterranean with testosterone at the conclusion of the event. Whatever the rest of his statement was we concluded that he had recommended against the men stripping completely. Bosses, especially ones with containers of mustard and ketchup filling their butt cracks, are never any fun!
Fortunately, one frolicking fellow seemed to have the same authority issues that Blonde has always had so he happily mooned the onlookers via an impressive display of in-water hand stands and somersaults.
Ritual concluded, the men walked down the street to a dive shop where they were returning their wetsuits. Blonde walked over and asked to have her picture taken with one (all, any…) of the men. The hand-standing mooner was very happy to comply. He said he was 24 and Blonde said she was too. (She was, more than 24 years ago but still, she was.) It isn’t as if passports were going to be checked in this transaction.
Mooner Man told Blonde to run and jump into his arms and kiss him. She slapped him and filed a complaint with the local authorities.
No wait, that isn’t accurate. She (in her mind, you can judge by the pictures) “ran” and “jumped” into his arms. Perhaps, based on his stunned look and quickly adopted wide stance he had underestimated Blonde’s weight. He had probably been bewitched by her compelling ankle socks and not taken in the full package – so to speak.
Blonde and Mooner Man had a brief yet groping, tongue-flicking and enjoyable PDI (Public Display of Idiocy). Blonde is reporting her own enjoyment. Mooner Man, as he walked back to his compatriots, pulled down the front of his skivvies apparently to display his “enjoyment” of the encounter. A guy isn’t going to do that unless he had, well, a reaction.
Thankfully, what began innocently didn’t end exactly that way.